On the outskirts of the West Timorese capital, Kupang, a dusty former
bus terminal still serves as the home for some of the estimated 60,000
East Timorese refugees who have not returned home.

In Noelbaki camp the people wear threadbare clothes and talk of a
shortage of food since Indonesian Government assistance was cut last
December in an effort to force them to accept repatriation to East Timor.

Markus Constancio still wears his Aitarak militia ID and insists there
are still 5000 people in the half-empty camp.

He complains that they have not seen their leaders for two years and
talks fondly of how things were pretty good in East Timor.

But he won't go back because he is scared.

Across town in the luxury Sasando Hotel, ex-militia leader Cancio Lopes
de Carvalho is meeting his English lawyer, who stresses that there are no
charges against him, despite his having been leader of one of East Timor's
largest militia groups, MAHIDI ("live or die for integration with
Indonesia").

Cancio was linked to several highly public and gruesome murders,
particularly in Galitas village near Suai.

On that occasion, Cancio was reported to have held aloft the dead
foetus removed from a pregnant woman who had just been shot by his men and
publicly declared the authority of his militia in the area.

That incident, on January 24, 1999, sparked the arrival of 6000 locals
in the Suai Catholic church, where some of them remained until they were
massacred by militia and Indonesian military after the United Nations
pullout from the town in September, an act in which Cancio's men also took
part.

Cancio and his men eventually destroyed the town of Cassa and forced
the population to flee to West Timor before the UN peacekeepers arrived in
the area in early October 1999.

Cancio still refers to those who fled with him and remain in the camps
opposite the area since controlled by New Zealand peacekeepers as "my
people", and says at least 6000 will come back if he returns and is
not arrested.

Cancio has not yet returned to East Timor because he says there are
accusations against him.

He has not been called to appear at the Indonesian ad hoc human rights
tribunal in Jakarta where 18 Indonesian military and police staff and East
Timorese civilians are being investigated.

He says that if the UN would charge him through the courts in East
Timor he would return to face the charges tomorrow.

At the same time he derides the work of the UN serious crimes unit that
has been tasked with investigating the crimes of 99.

Cancio says he is alone now and has no contact with other former
militia leaders. He suspects other former leaders such as Eurico Guterres
do not talk to him because they will not discuss the role of the
Indonesian military in the violence in East Timor, which Cancio says he is
prepared to discuss in an East Timorese court.

Eurico's new position as leader of the youth wing of Indonesian
President Megawati Sukarnoputri's political party PDIP keeps him in
Jakarta.

The members of his former militia group, the Dili-based Aitarak, still
wear their trademark black T-shirts and attempt to exercise a degree of
intimidation among the dwindling number of refugees in the camps.

Yusuf Edi Mulyono, Indonesian director of the Jesuit refugee service,
says the lack of prosecutions for crimes in 1999 hampers the return of the
remaining refugees.

The fear is real. Even those who did nothing may be part of a big
family.

A reconciliation commission is still an embryo and people are afraid of
those taking the law into their own hands, he says.

Mulyono says there are still problems in the camps. There has been a
riot in Noelbaki. He believes that up to 30,000 people will eventually
return as the work of the reconciliation commission and serious crimes
becomes more transparent in East Timor.

Mario Viera, spokesman for Untas, the East Timorese pro-integration
organisation and political descendant of the militia leadership based in
Kupang, believes resettlement in Indonesia is the only solution for former
militia.

"These people who work with the military have been
indoctrinated," he says. "It is not easy for them to
change."

Viera says the trial in Jakarta of Untas board member Abilio Soares, a
former East Timor governor under the Indonesians, is a signal of how weak
the Indonesian Government has become.

"The murders during and after the popular consultation were done
by the pro-independence people and we will try and use the tribunal in
Jakarta to educate people on what happened."

Viera says the people who are the losers are always those on trial.

He refers to the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague to make his
point.

Viera, like 9000 other former East Timorese military, police and civil
servants now in West Timor, receives a wage from the Indonesian Government
and now works in the local office for foreign investment in West Timor.

But he believes his people have been betrayed by Indonesia.

Untas still officially rejects the result of the UN ballot. It says
Indonesia has been manipulated by the international community to accept
the result. Untas claims to represent all those in the camps and has urged
people to stay in West Timor.

Viera admits the cancellation of food aid last December is achieving
the goal of slowly forcing people to return.

"If we had billions of rupiah to feed the people, of course we
would refuse [to go back]," he says.

"They are using this to achieve their political goals of forcing
our return."

With the return of the last of the refugees, the claims of the former
pro-integration leaders to represent them will cease and any remaining
bargaining power they have with the UN or the Indonesian Government will
end.

Torn between tears and smiles, the refugees line up with all their
worldly goods and wait to go home. Some are even bringing their dead.

Waiting to cross the frontier to his native East Timor, Mateas Soares
has little to say except that he has to go home.

"It is my place of birth. I have to go back," said the father
of four.

It is the most common answer among these few hundred weary people.

They had fled East Timor amid the chaos and killing that followed the
1999 referendum on independence for the Indonesian-occupied territory, and
still feel a strong bond to their native land.

Clutching small wads of US dollar notes handed out by Indonesian
officials before they leave, they have their photographs taken and then
wait beside the small convoy of yellow trucks which will take them back to
East Timor.

Mr Soares, 34, is heading to Manututo, the home town that he shares
with President-elect Xanana Gusmao. He remembers when Mr Gusmao studied at
a local seminary and is glad he will be East Timor's first president.
"He is a struggler," he said.

Mr Gusmao's constant push for reconciliation and visits to West Timor
have made him a hero even to many of those who opposed independence.

A line of perhaps 20 trucks is waiting ahead of the group to cross the
border, all loaded with the returnees' entire belongings. These often
include the remains of the houses they lived in during their two years in
squalid West Timor refugee camps. They are allowed to dismantle the
buildings and retain the materials to construct new homes back in East
Timor.

When the UN military observers monitoring the operation get the okay,
the convoy makes its way slowly over a few dozen metres of "no-man's
land".

But the border region is very different to the tension-filled place it
was in late 1999.

Customs and immigration posts have been set up on both sides, and only
those with passports or equivalent documents are allowed to go through.

Perhaps 200 to 300 people will cross the border today, the latest in a
steady stream of returnees from the dilapidated camps in West Timor that
Indonesia wants to close. At the current rate of return, many of the camps
might be empty within a few months. Many refugees are rushing to beat the
deadline next Monday, East Timor's independence day. After that, Indonesia
will not consider them as refugees, but as ordinary Indonesian citizens.

The returnees are searched several times for weapons, at least twice on
the Indonesian side and once on the East Timor side. As their belongings
are unloaded from the trucks at Batugade, they are also searched.

There, the workers of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
hand out food and blankets, and check their identities again. Some may
spend the night there, awaiting new trucks to take them home. Many of the
men are interviewed for "security assessment". Local
administrations are notified about those considered potential risks, for
example, because they joined the anti-independence militia.

One elderly man is bringing the body of his 12-year-old son, who died
of malaria in 2000. Jefrino Moises says he will bury his son, Januario,
again in his home village of Balibo, where he will resume his old life as
a farmer. He says he does not care whether his house is still standing. He
has friends and relatives in Balibo. It is his home. With his wife and
three remaining children, he is going to farm his land again.

Gusmao visit ends refugee's fears

The Australian May 15, 2002

By Don Greenlees, Jakarta correspondent, in Dili

FRANCISCO Alves voted in favour of East Timor remaining a part of
Indonesia in the 1999 referendum on independence. When the vote went the
other way, 10 families from the small coastal village of Ulmera, including
his own, decided to flee across the border into West Timor.

Two days ago, the 30-year-old farmer returned home. Fears of
retribution, kept alive by rumours that returnees were mistreated, kept
Alves and his family in a camp near the border for 19 months.

Alves dates his change of heart to an April 4 visit to West Timor by
East Timor's president-elect Xanana Gusmao.

"In the visit Xanana said, 'Just come back to East Timor, I will
receive you with open arms'," says Alves as he waits in a refugee
transit camp outside the capital, Dili.

"Xanana is a very good man for East Timor and we were impressed by
what he said. We kept his message in our hearts, that is why we came
back." On Monday, the day Alves crossed the border with the help of
the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 469 other exiled East Timorese
joined him on the trip home - one of the biggest single-day returns for
some time.

In the first five months of this year, 14,000 people have come back
from the West Timor camps, not far short of the total for 2001. Just days
before East Timor formally gains its independence, the sudden upsurge in
refugee returns has raised hopes among UNHCR officials and East Timorese
leaders that an end to the refugee problem is in sight.

"There is definitely a new dynamic on the other side of the
border," says Dili-based UNHCR official Jake Moreland.

The pool of refugees has dwindled from 260,000 soon after the
independence vote unleashed a wave of revenge killings and destruction in
September 1999 to about 55,000 today. Nearly half of these people came
back in the first three months.

But resolving the refugee problem has been one of the most intractable
issues in relations between East Timor and its former occupier, Indonesia.

Although the Indonesian security forces have won recent praise for
improving co-operation, Moreland says many refugees are still discouraged.

"There are stories spread that couples will be separated and wives
raped," he says.

Despite these hindrances, the UNHCR is banking on the May 20
declaration of independence and retreat of the UN drawing many of the
undecided home. During Gusmao's April 4 visit, UNHCR distributed thousands
of postcards printed with the phrase "come home before 20 May".

It is hoped hundreds, possibly thousands, will accept the invitation.

Migi Barreto, 17, is one of those who decided he wanted to witness for
himself the foundation of a new country. He too came home on Monday.
Awaiting transport to his village of Holarua, Marreto says: "We heard
in West Timor that East Timor would be independent on the 20th of May and
we would have felt very bad if we didn't come back in time."

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